Back in his native Guadalajara last week, Los Angeles-based professor and author Manuel Aguilar-Moreno launched a Spanish-language account of the 1846-1848 U.S.-Mexican War, a tome he calls a “humane” study of an “unjust” invasion.

A major motivation for writing “Reflexiones sobre la invasion de Estados Unidos a Mexico” came while studying for his PhD at the University of Texas.

“I found that the bodies of 30 Mexican soldiers were being kept in a black garbage bag, stored in the archeology college lab,” Aguilar-Moreno said at the book launch held at the Western Mexican Museum of Archaeology. He decided to investigate their story after receiving a petition from the Mexican Army, whose senior officers had called for the bodies to be returned to Mexico for a decent burial.